Apple’s iOS 14.5 update, which includes an App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework requiring marketers to get users’ permission to enable tracking, finally arrived on Monday, April 26. Consumers must now opt-in to each individual app they use, and app publishers have to provide a prompt to allow users to make that choice.
Complicating matters: Estimated opt-in rates are looking paltry, around 20-30 percent. That means that targeting audiences and attributing online behavior just became a more challenging task for digital marketers.
Apple’s policy change, in addition to other data visibility limitations like privacy regulation, has had a ripple effect across the digital marketing industry. Facebook, for instance, reduced its conversion tracking window from 28 days to seven and cited Apple as the impetus. Though the result of these limitations is a muddling of data insights and less accurate reporting, marketers who continue to leverage Facebook ads can focus on three core principles that hold true despite this erosion of data, according to a piece in AdMonsters by Elliot Gensemer, Senior Director, Account Services at Metric Theory.
Efficacy of Channel Marketing Data
Though Facebook has limited its attribution window to seven days, Gensemer writes, in some cases clients’ conversions occur outside of that 28-day window. Therefore, blinds spots in data reporting already exist. He recommends creating benchmarks to account for data blind spots, focus on where the data is most reliable and adjust channel performance goals.
Focus on Incrementality
Optimal budget setting depends on leveraging incrementality of conversions, or focusing on how many new customers were gained from the investment as opposed to attempting to determine how advertising is contributing to the growth of the business. Gensemer suggests investing in tactics that have the greatest incremental impact and gauging the lift that occurs from each channel and tactic.
For more on these principles, including leaning into personalization through ad creative and user experience, read more in AdMonsters.
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